Before you make a decision on starting retail therapy, in fact it has already affected your mood. You remind of this therapy because you can’t release your bad feelings. You may have had an accident or met some troubles. You feel so upset even extremely angry about all your sufferings. At this moment, you want to say them out to your family or your friends. Maybe on second thought, you don’t want them to be worried about you or they just too busy to chat with you. Then, you will turn to retail therapy for aid. You want to buy a lot of things to comfort yourself. Among these cases, disappointed love can be the biggest reason that leads to crazy shopping. Those brokenhearted people, especially ladies, they prefer this way to take the relationship out. However, next your may sink into anxiety whether you should go on a shopping spree or not. Two elves in your mind will argue for this issue. One is saying: “Go ahead, just rush into the shopping mall! Go on a spree! Let those troubles get out. Your mood will be bright again in that therapy. You know what; it is called therapy for its curing.” The other is saying: “No, please control yourself. Shopping or such retail therapy is meaningless. It can neither bring you back to the previous no-trouble time nor cheer you up. What it only can do is waste your money. Please think carefully of your common salaries and the rent you need to pay. It is not worth doing it.” Two elves can’ stop fighting and you just have lost in such chaos. So, as you can see from all these, the influence of retail therapy have already happened before you meet it officially.

During your shopping, retail therapy can really cure your mood. Once you decided to make yourself happy by this way, you wish it can really work. It does sometimes. During your hanging out, the sceneries outside or something in the window can distract your bad feelings. Talking with friends or shop assistants about fashion, clothes or suitable match can drive you into this new splendid world. You forget the annoyances for the time being. Then, as the talk goes on, you suddenly see the beautiful shoes, which represent the signal for a true start of your retail therapy. In shopping mall, the dazzling favorites will fascinate you all the time and provide you with a visual feast. Apart from the sense of aesthetic, you can feel better if they finally become yours. Your satisfaction will rise further as you purchasing. Under the help of professional assistant, you have new hat, new necklace, new scarf, new dress, new shoes and even new makeup. You only need to stand in front of the mirror without Cinderella’s spell, and then you’ll find you have turned over a new leaf. The joy brought from new look urges you to go on your passionate shopping. Next, no more fitting and no more hesitation, you simply get what you like for the fist sight. Items purchased during periods of retail therapy are sometimes referred to as "comfort buys". At last, your satisfied smiles show up which means you really get comfort from those “comfort buys”. I am a student and haven’t enough money to buy lots of “comfort buys”; however, window shopping can certainly cheer me up. Or sometimes, buy some trinkets will also give me huge sense of happiness. Therefore, retail therapy makes a much difference for your bad emotion.

However, your emotion in retail therapy may go the other way. The survey among 2000 American women in 2012 found out so many things that retail therapy could have some disadvantages to your emotions and might worse your original terrible emotions. It is said that about 30% women annoyed by arrogant salesperson and couldn’t find her adoring things. Also, the most respondents said they felt so upset by the long queue outside the fitting room and even lost patience to change bad feelings because the feeling only to go worse. Meanwhile, 44% of them thought they would be looked down in some boutiques; 38% said they couldn’t find the suitable clothes; 10% said they would fell embarrassed when they were asked about their size; 37% said they were not comfortable in fitting room; and 15% didn’t received joy of therapy because of their poor figure. So, all these reasons can totally ruin you in therapy. Coleen Nolan, a spokesman of a brand named Marisota, did some study and denied a myth: it is the happiest thing for women to dive into the shopping mall. He said: “retail therapy is just a common phrase related women with purchase. However, to some ladies, buying clothes is extremely different with therapy. If there’s no good body shape, it is not easy to buy clothes that can really cheer you up. Nevertheless you have perfect figure, and yet you might come back empty-handed. That is, shopping supposes to be a nice thing, but you can’t always receive supposed result in the shopping mall.”

Though retail therapy has benefits and shortcomings during its process, you may see the true influence on your emotion clearer after the done.

After the shopping, it is the high time to see the effect of retail therapy. One case is that you get satisfaction and comfort from buying things. Your full wardrobe and shoe shelf please you with their new look and your new look appeals more praises or even more admirers. Maybe a new relationship will begin and you will soon get out of the struggles in previous one. In addition, you think that you have become a fashionistas who you ever think you will be before. This feeling of standing on the leading edge of the fashion can actually help you build your confidence. This confidence can do well not only to your relationship in daily life, but also to your working. You may express your idea more clearly and the teamwork may go better.

However, the other case is that the curative effect on your mood is unreliable. There are findings in a new study from Chicago University: Shopping might relief you at the moment, but if you wanted to use this kind of therapy to cure your lonely heart or chaotic emotions, you must know that it was useless even adverse. Through data analysis, researchers found that actually it could enhance people’s sense of loneliness. Further more, it would form a vicious circle: you go shopping because of loneliness, but made it deeper instead. As this went on, you would be lost in this retail therapy. Besides the problem of loneliness, it may cause some more serious problem. In 2001, the European Union conducted a study finding that 33% of shoppers surveyed had "high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption". This was causing debt problems for many. The same study also found that young Scottish people had the highest susceptibility to binge purchasing. Also, researchers at Melbourne University have advocated its classification as a psychological disorder called oniomania or compulsive shopping disorder. These can be so horrible because it is not only a slight sentimental problem; it is too serious to ruin your normal life. So, this just tells us that this therapy may do much harm to your emotions and even send you to the real medical therapy.

Now, you should have a thorough idea about retail therapy. It is not perfect. It has advantages and disadvantages; it may make your better or let you worse. It is not a stranger; it can exist in everyone’s life. Although it has big influence on your emotions from many aspects, you don’t have to worship it to show your differences with others, and you also don’t have to reject it like avoid a virus. What you need to do is to face it with a comprehensive and objective view. Then, you will realize that you are no longer controlled by it, but control it in your own hands. When your emotion get hurt and you have no choice but to resort to retail therapy, you can use it properly which can bring you real happiness and cheerfulness. In that case, your feelings can exactly refreshed and keep away from the bother. In a word, this condition is where the retail therapy’s true value lies.